Truth

RE THE letter from the mom of a Temple student on security: It's a two-way street. Students buy just as much liquor, beer and drugs as the "locals. " They throw loud parties in residential neighborhoods, unrinate in public, etc. Temple police are on the scene before city cops and cover up what the suburban kids do. Yes, North Philly is bad, but you can get hit by a car anywhere. Violence is everywhere! All races commit crimes! You should have sent your kid somewhere in Pittsburgh.

Although there's little likelihood that we'll get to cast a vote for him, something about the candidacy of Sonny Bono, who wants to become the mayor of Palm Springs, Calif., has a certain appeal. Mr. Bono, who rose to stardom as an entertainer with his former wife Cher, has also been truck driver, shoe salesman, restaurateur. Now he's turned his sights toward becoming the chief executive of the wealthy desert community. The message he's taking to the voters? "I've never been qualified for anything I've done.

10 tonight CHANNEL 6 When a wealthy woman is found dead - and her husband barely alive - in the couple's Upper West Side brownstone, Kathryn (Maura Tierney, right) charges their teenage son with the crime, and he confesses.

The first votes are in on the President's request for $100 million in aid to the contras. That the votes by House committees are along party lines is regrettable. The U.S.-sponsored war in Nicaragua is not a partisan issue; it is a matter of truth, justice and national priorities beyond party lines. Truth is no longer a criterion for the administration. In the midst of distortions and lies, there is one kernel of truth - that the Sandinista government is receiving support from the Soviet Union.

Gov. Christine Whitman: I must commend you. Asking for Col. Carl Williams' resignation as head of the New Jersey State Police seemed to be a very politically correct move. The positive reaction from minority groups confirms that. Taking into consideration your political agenda, I would imagine that what you say and do regarding this matter can and will reflect your status within the minority groups. That is very important to you, is it not? But at any time, did you or anyone from your staff bother to confirm what Col. Williams said to be true?

How I long for the days of Harry Truman! What I wouldn't give to return to yesteryear, when our leaders and our government at least pretended they were following the Constitution. Now, the government is investigating itself - again. This time, in response to the horrific tragedy in Waco. I am a baby boomer. I was part of the generation that tuned in, turned on and generally got strung out. We saw it all - civil rights, Vietnam, poverty, Watergate, assassinations. Yet, even in those changing and tragic times, we thought right would prevail.

If there is any journalistic justice, you had to keep turning pages to reach this story. Lots and lots of pages. Past the horse racing. Past the tire ads. All the way back to the classifieds. As in: Help wanted. Team will provide shoes, shirts, shorts, towels. If you can't make it, send someone who can. "This stinks," Sharone Wright grumbled in the aftermath of the 76ers' grim, 92-72 loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers yesterday. "It's disgusting. Everybody's out there trying hard, but not hard enough.

District Attorney Ron Castille says a political debate "is not designed to illuminate much. It is one guy calling names for a half hour, and the other guy returning the favor. " Well, we'd kind of hoped for a bit more in the way of public discourse from candidates for one of the city's top elected offices. But it looks like Mr. Castille may be right, after all - at least where it concerns the verbal jousts he and challenger Walter M. Phillips Jr. have traded. Neither Mr. Castille's questionable charge that Mr. Phillips attempted to fix a criminal case in 1976 nor Mr. Phillips' bum raps on the Castille office for supposedly bungling a Junior Black Mafia case and the prosecution of an alleged gay-basher turn out to be what the two politicians would have us believe.

When Pope John Paul II emerges from a brief meeting with President Clinton in St. Louis today for a vigorous schedule of masses, pronouncements and motorcades, it may sound like he's talking about the president's famous problems. But that won't be the case, says Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua of Philadelphia, who just spent three days with the pontiff in Mexico and will take part in the St. Louis welcome. "I believe the Holy Father will talk about the need for truth," Bevilacqua said by phone from St. Louis last night.

Note to GOP re Benghazi: Stop calling it Watergate, Iran-contra, bigger than both, etc. First, it might well be, but we don't know. History will judge. Second, overhyping will only diminish the importance of the scandal if it doesn't meet presidency-breaking standards. Third, focusing on the political effects simply plays into the hands of Democrats desperately claiming that this is nothing but partisan politics. Let the facts speak for themselves. They are damning enough. Let Gregory Hicks, the honorable, apolitical second-in-command that night in Libya, movingly and grippingly demolish the president's Benghazi mantra that "what I have always tried to do is just get all the facts" and "every piece of information that we got, as we got it, we laid it out for the American people.

NICK OFFERMAN, who plays the meat-loving, woodworking, mustachioed Ron Swanson on NBC's "Parks and Recreation," will perform a Preston and Steve -presented one-man show at the Tower Theater on Sept. 3. (Tickets go on sale tomorrow, by the way.) But Offerman has been to Philly before. And some lucky ladies have nudie pics of him to show for it. As a young actor in 1991, Offerman spent a year at Malvern's People's Light & Theater Company doing a Kabuki version of "Achilles.

After years of moaning about "conspiracies" against them, conservative activists finally have real evidence to take before the court of public opinion. Meaning, of course, last week's revelation that the Internal Revenue Service has been giving extra scrutiny to groups with the words tea party or patriot in their names. Extra scrutiny from the IRS is about as welcome as extra scrutiny from the proctologist, so one can hardly blame conservative groups for complaining, as they've done since last year.

AND SO, what Jack McMahon audaciously called a racist prosecution, wherein a black man was being called to account for ending the lives of countless nameless black babies, has ended in a righteous verdict: guilty, guilty, and again, guilty. Three lives vindicated with three words, uttered after months of testimony and evidence that makes you want to turn your face away. But we looked, and we understood that here was madness and evil, not racism. Kermit Gosnell could now face the death penalty, something that has far-reaching repercussions not only for the immediate victims and their families but - and don't let them tell you otherwise - also for the abortion industry.

TURKEY FACTS: * One of the first ancient cities to use the name Philadelphia was in what is present-day Turkey. The city now is called Alasehir. * Philadelphia's own Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey, not the bald eagle, to be the national bird. He once wrote that the turkey, "though a little vain and silly," is "a bird of courage. " * Turkeys can fly. * Turkeys sleep in trees at night. * A turkey's diet consists mainly of seeds, insects and nuts. * The snood on a turkey is the bit of red flesh that grows from a turkey's forehead over its beak.

Adapted from a recent online discussion. Question: A column of yours on breakups brought up some really good points - the big one being, if you're dissatisfied with a relationship, don't fake it because you don't want to hurt the other person's feelings. I was recently on the receiving end of this, despite my multiple attempts at and encouragement of honest conversations no matter what the truth was. Because my ex didn't want to lose me as a girlfriend - he enjoyed the perks - he didn't say anything.

By Katrina Anderson Since Gov. Corbett announced his intention to privatize Pennsylvania's liquor stores, the beneficiaries of the status quo have come out in force. Last week, for example, State Store union boss Wendell Young IV and some of his members shouted over business leaders speaking in support of privatization in the Capitol rotunda in Harrisburg. The friends of government-run liquor stores have to resort to such tactics because they have neither public opinion nor facts on their side.

DEAR ABBY: I am divorced and have a 37-year-old son, "Teddy," who lives on his own except when he's in trouble or has nowhere else to go. Then he moves back in with me. The problem is my son is a liar and has been ever since he was a teenager. He even lies when telling the truth would be better. Teddy has been in trouble with the law in the past and is now in trouble again. Of course, he says he's innocent. I no longer want to hear his lies. Another problem: Teddy is extremely good-looking and women swoon over him. He ends up using them and then dumping them, and then they call me. Is there treatment for people who can't tell the truth?

The Accidental Pallbearer By Frank Lentricchia Melville House. 197 pp. $14.95 paperback Reviewed by Michael Harrington   Utica, N.Y, the downtrodden upstate city in which The Accidental Pallbearer is set, is as much the main character of literary critic Frank Lentricchia's gripping, complex detective story as the depressive shamus Eliot Conte, whose series debut this is. Once a 19th-century white Anglo-Saxon...

ALL THIS TALK about the huge property-tax increase, and the politicians have no accountability. City Council and the mayor will all retire with lucrative pensions, all funded by the taxpayers. How are city cars and insurance provided to Council members? No cuts in spending for the politicians. The mayor and Council are incompetent and disgraceful. They show no leadership or courage. This new and large increase in property taxes should be described as stealing. Is there anyone on Council with the moral fortitude to speak up and be statesmanlike?